Thursday, July 28, 2005

Car Insurance

An update on the ongoing effort to becoming a Florida resident: I got my Florida issued car insurance, after only two hours with the agent!

It took so long because he had to call my agent in Washington, wait for some faxes, and so forth. Various tasks are more cumbersome when your bank doesn't have any branches in your new state, and your car/home insurance company doesn't write policies in the new state. For me the involved companies are Wells Fargo and Metropolitan Life.

My agent was helpful while we waited. It seemed most of this was due to verification - he showed me various options in the insurance database, and what happens to your rate when you can't prove you had insurance for the past six months, and so forth. What was intersting is that sometimes, carrying a higher liability limits is cheaper! One company would give a lower rate for 100/300 liability rather than 50/100 liability, even though 100/300 is better coverage. The reason has to do with statistics and risk - people who carry 100/300 coverage are usually safer so they get lower rates. He showed me the worst category is some minimal coverage at 10/20, where the rate is nearly double.

With that all set, it was time to pay. They had an EFT option, but charged a service fee for doing that. There was also an option to pay 6 months at a time, and get a 15% discount. So that's what I did, because I'm all for saving a little bit on insurance.

Now that I have Florida issued car insurance, I have the honor of battling it out with the DMV and try to get Florida license plates. I hope to take care of that tomorrow, because with Florida plates I can sign up for the E Pass and zip through the quick lane instead of fishing around for change at all the dang tolls on the highways in this area.